This strange surprisal put the Knight
And wrathful Squire into a fright;
And tho' they stood prepar'd, with fatal575
Impetuous rancour, to join battle,
Both thought it was the wisest course
To wave the fight, and mount to horse;
And to secure, by swift retreating,
Themselves from danger of worse beating;580
Yet neither of them would disparage,
By utt'ring of his mind, his courage,
Which made them stoutly keep their ground,
With horror and disdain wind-bound.
And now the cause of all their fear[1]585
By slow degrees approach'd so near,
They might distinguish different noise[2]
Of horns, and pans, and dogs, and boys,
And kettle-drums, whose sullen dub
Sounds like the hooping of a tub:590
But when the sight appear'd in view,
They found it was an antique show;
A triumph, that for pomp and state,
Did proudest Romans emulate:[3]
For as the aldermen of Rome595
Their foes at training overcome,
And not enlarging territory,
As some, mistaken, write in story,[4]
- ↑ The poet does not suffer his heroes to proceed to open violence; but ingeniously puts an end to the dispute, by introducing them to a new adventure. The drollery of the following scene is inimitable.
- ↑ Var. "They might discern respective noise," in editions of 1664.
- ↑ The Skimmington, a ludicrous cavalcade in derision of a husband's submitting to be beaten by his wife. It consisted generally of a man riding behind a woman, with his face to the horse's rump, holding a distaff in his hand, the woman all the while belabouring him with a ladle. The learned reader will be amused by comparing this description with the pompous account of Æmilius's triumph, as described by Plutarch, and the satirical one given by Juvenal in his tenth Satire. The details of the Skimmington are so accurately described by the poet, that he must have derived them from actual observation. See a full account of it in Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 180 (Bohn's edition).
- ↑ Our poet mixes up together the ceremonies of enlarging the Pomœrium, a Roman triumph, a lord mayor's show, the exercising of the train-bands, and a borough election, in the most wanton spirit of burlesque poetry.
